The idealistic mind dwells in extremes

Through contemplation in Nature, we could understand that there is no straight tree or straight line, no matter how straight it seems to be. Nevertheless, we seem happy with the ideal of a straight line.
We live in a world of ideals. We strive to reach those, but we will always be short. Ideals are unreachable.

The ideal of having a mind capable of completing all tasks with accuracy is broken, when several tasks appear at once.

Ahnanda: “ The world is in a hurry. Here, it is easy to lose focus and forget. My mind is focused on a task but then the phone rings and as I answer it, another person appears taking my attention, at the end; I forget to complete my former task. That juggling of many things at once is stressful. Frustration may set in followed by some anger.Is there a way to focus the mind and not lose my cool?”

Mathias: “That is a matter of knowing priorities. Take your time. The world may be in a hurry but not you.”

Miguel: “That which has attraction will take your complete attention.”

Mathias: “Always find beauty, even if what is in front is referred as ugly. There is something there to be appreciative about. Find it. Feel it. That will keep your mind focused.”

Ahnanda: “ That reminds me about the symbol of yin and yang. There is a small black circle like an eye, in the large white area and vice versa. That means to me that there is a seed of beauty in ugliness and ugliness in beauty, for one side fuels the other.”

Miguel:” While in contemplation, find beauty then feel it with your senses, finally feed yourself with that experience. Make it part of you. Integrate it.”

Although the ideal is that beauty is completely different than ugliness; in Life itself both perceptions are mingled together, they originate each other, feed each other. The mind lives in the world of ideals. The mind looks for what is attractive, beautiful and typically, rejects that which it considers ugly. That rejection preserves a recurrent experience.

A man may look for a beautiful woman. Interestingly, I have noticed that once that experienced of greater beauty has saturated his mind, an increasingly less attractive person will be looked for. The mind knows extremes. That saturation is synonym with obsessiveness, which degenerates into compulsiveness. It is a disease of the mind.

Life supports what is complementary to create unity. However, we don’t. We seek distinction, uniqueness through separation.Distinction of what? Our own ego to embellish it.That separation ends up in isolation. Interestingly, that is the time when we look for meaning in Life.

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2 comments

Thanks brother You are writing about something which i have been going through. 🙂
Yes, like most of us, i had worked to attain distinction, accuracy, and perfection. And I had to face many set backs and emotional upheavals during the course of the journey. Recently i started to notice that i have been suffering because of the man made/ self made assumptions and beliefs. Then I made an effort to really look around and observe others who seemed to be facing my kind of situations… only then i noticed that some of them were leading a happy life untouched and uninfluenced by what others think of them. i admired them (and felt jealousy too) for the freedom they were enjoying.Though my mind is still not very much convinced about changing my thought patterns, i feel very much relieved to realise that i can lead a happy life irrespective of what i achieve or not able to achieve.
Thanks. You enabled me to think in a different way.
regards,
Gayathri.